Just Thinkin'

Dear Miss D

Kirk M — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:48:22 +0000

Dear Miss D

I want to express my heartfelt thanks for the short but thoughtful comments you left my last three posts, for your hopes that I feel better soon and especially the link back to that single page website with all those lovely photos of yourself. You are quite pretty. You weren’t cold dressed like that were you?

And I would have been glad to leave your short but thoughtful comments on my last three posts but unfortunately, the links on your ever so lovely photos of yourself appeared to lead to another much more complicated website full of the type of photos that I’m sure would cause my cat to drop all it’s fur if he should ever chance to glance at them.

He uses the computer and leaves a comment or two at the blog here when I’m busy doing other things you see. And I wouldn’t want to take the chance that he might inadvertently click on the link to your ever so lovely photos and somehow find his way to that much more complicated website with all those other amazing photos that would cause his fur to drop off.

It is November after all and it does get rather cold here this time of year.

So with great regrets I had to remove your comments from my last three posts. If you wish to still comment on future posts please feel free to do so but please…leave out the link to your ever so lovely photos. I’m afraid for my cat’s health. He’s not as young as he used to be.

Nice trick using the bathroom mirror to get those tricky angle shots by the way.

Possibly Related Matter (but then again, possibly not)

All sick and accounted for

Kirk M — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:55:24 +0000

We’re both sick today. Of course we are! If October in the Northeast Kingdom wasn’t bad enough we have to have the black plague on top of it.

Now I haven’t told Laurie that I’m sick as well since she’s a lot sicker than I am. I did offer to go in and open up the quilt shop for her this morning but she decided to take on that task herself as she had things that absolutely had to be early (things I couldn’t do…like anything she does). I will be going in and relieving her at noon so she can come home and expire. Hopefully not permanently. I kind of like having her around.

It’s a conspiracy, I know it. It’s how the new administration is taking care of the global warming issue by releasing specially tailored super flu’s into the air. Knock off a million people or so each winter season and viola! Less people breathing warm CO2 into the air.

Uh-huh. I must be sick to be writing stuff like that.

Damn! Look at the time. And I still have to take the recyclables on their weekly journey to be (eventually) reincarnated as fenders for electric cars.

See ya’.

Tags: flu, sick

Possibly Related Matter (but then again, possibly not)

So where am I anway?

Kirk M — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 01:37:26 +0000

A friend of mine, in a recent post, was lamenting the fact that nobody seems to be writing up any posts these days. Like maybe we’ve all gone into hibernation or something, disappearing into the woodwork from whence we came. In short, where the hell is everybody?

Has everyone said everything there is to say? Is everyone too wrapped up in trying to stay alive during ‘our current financial blip’? Or have people just gotten bored with the whole business?

Or maybe all of the above?

Hell, you got me. I do sympathize with him or maybe empathise is a more appropriate word with the possible exception that he’s still writing just about everyday whereas I seem to be sitting here stuck in the proverbial rut. But, then again, I always seem to be stuck in a proverbial rut.

Aside from that I can definitely see where he’s coming from. The world we started blogging in 3 and some odd years ago is not the same world that we’re still stubbornly blogging away in now. Back when we started this adventure in blunderland bloggerland, Facebook was just peeking out of dorm windows and considering the prospects of moving off campus and Twitter was still a twinkle in Odeo’s eyes.

Now it’s all about tweets and twerps and live news feeds and how many times you can change your Facebook avatar in the space of 3 days. Is it just the furtherization (if that’s not a word, it should be) of the “Instant Gratification” mentality that’s over swept the globe like some modern day version of a mental black plague that makes the old fashioned blog too slow to bother with while the authors just wallow around in the muck of has-been-a-lity?

Or are we just burned out?

Could it be that it takes a rare individual to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous online instantaneous sociality while the rest of us get left on the battlefield of yesterday’s comment section? Lost in blogging purgatory, ever staring into the blank field of a “New post” page while the mind reels in the throes of bloggish apathy?

Oh, good grief, did I really that?

Okay, so who knows? Perhaps it’s just the calm before the next blogging storm yet to come. All I know is that it’s late and I haven’t had my cup of tea yet so I’ll see you all tomorrow. That is if I think of anything to say?

Tags: Blogging, changing blogosphere, facebook, social networks, twitter

Possibly Related Matter (but then again, possibly not)

The colors are past. Here comes the trash

Kirk M — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:50:54 +0000

This Autumn was beautiful. In all the years I’ve visited then lived Vermont I can honestly say that the colors were the best I’ve seen yet. And even though we’re a bit past peak here, the Tamarack is now at it’s most brilliant shades of bright orange/yellow. People come from all over to take in our Fall colors and that’s all fine and dandy. Just as long as they don’t scare the farm animals we’re okay with that.

Sure, there’s always the odd ones out who decide to stop in the middle of a country road on a blind curve to take a picture and end up having their small car getting into an argument with a local 4WD pick up truck loaded down with firewood (guess which vehicle wins the argument?) but just like out-of-state hunters up here during hunting season, some yearly losses are to be expected after all.

However, there’s one thing I find intolerable with these leaf peepers coming up here and taking in all the beauty the hills, valleys and mountains have to offer.

They throw their trash all over them before they leave.

My wife and I we’re traveling down state today on our regular bi-monthly trip and were appalled at the amount of trash and garbage that was on the sides of Highway 91.

Paper coffee cups, soda cups, Styrofoam coolers, crumpled up McDonalds bags, 2 gallon dispensers of spring Water (guaranteed out of state), entire garbage can sized trash bags stuffed with trash, all strewn along the sides of the highway. You knew it was out of state trash as it increased exponentially as we came nearer to a “Scenic Vista” type pull over or rest area.

The sides of the highways aren’t like this the rest of the year so what does that tell you?

Okay, so not everyone who drives up/over/down to Vermont to view the colors of Autumn are slobs that have no consideration for anyone else but themselves, who feel that’s it’s okay to throw their trash about our dooryards and roadsides but there’s a good number of them. Enough to keep our state workers out there dressed in fluorescent orange, green and yellow vests picking up all of the trash these people leave in their “appreciation” of what they’ve enjoyed by the way of the scenery.

Perhaps we locals should petition the Vermont State Government to institute an ILP season (Inconsiderate Leaf Peeper). Any out-of stater found leaving their trash in anything but a proper trash container or throwing their trash out a moving vehicle for us to clean up later should be rounded up and sentenced to walk the entire length of Highway 91 from the Canadian border to the Massachusetts border picking up all the trash left behind by their fellow peepers.

I suppose there’s a few locals who’d just as soon shoot ‘em and be done with it but the law’s getting pretty touchy about that kind of thing these days. I don’t suppose it would take too long for these violators to find out that there’s not a whole lot of “flat” to our highways once they start their sentence.

We’d be considerate though. We’d start them just after mud season.

Think that would learn them?

Tags: autumn, autumn colors, autumn in vermont, leaf peeprs, tourists

Possibly Related Matter (but then again, possibly not)

There are times

Kirk M — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:49:31 +0000

In the often confusing, frustrating world of writing, and blogging is no exception to the rule, there are times when those who take what they write at least partially seriously run up against the wall of their own limitations. For myself, it’s my own ability (or lack thereof) to describe the way I’m feeling; to express on paper be it real or virtual exactly the way the subject affects me personally—even if it’s short and silly or long and thoughtful.

Then all of a sudden inspiration hits me and I’m ready to write but then I make the classic mistake. I decide to hit the web browser first and inevitably I find something to distract me and today was no exception. In fact, I found or re-found something that hit me right in the gut or heart to be more precise and I was suddenly reminded how close my wall of limitations really was.

I was simply overwhelmed by not only what this person had written but in the way that she touched my heart so thoroughly. In a way I never would be able to duplicate if I were in the same position. The post isn’t new (does it have to be?) and no, my friend isn’t always this reverent (who is?), but for this particular writing, she has good reason to be.

It’s about her young, very special son after all.

The secret fire

Tags: friends